Amarillo Little Theatre's Dog Days Film Festival features dark view of humanity

Amarillo Little Theatre goes dark this weekend with a new fundraiser.

The inaugural Dog Days Film Festival puts a focus on film noir, a genre noted for a darker view of humanity.

The festival, which runs Friday and Saturday in ALT’s Adventure Space, 2751 Civic Circle, features three classics of the genre — which can’t be specifically advertised so ALT won’t have to pay extra licensing fees.

Still, organizers promise popular films in the genre, and careful readers might pick up on the three titles that will be featured.

Screenings of the individual movies are free, but a $50 event pass entitles audiences admission to the opening-night gala and priority seating for the films.

The Rev. David Green, a festival organizer and ALT board member, said the festival draws on the common ground between live theater and cinema — not just in the way both art forms inspire each other, but in the way the audience experiences them.

“Theater and film are very closely related in the sense that you’re sitting down in an auditorium full of folks, and you are suspending your disbelief for a couple of hours, being entertained and maybe challenged,” Green said.

So though the festival’s films are available for home viewing, “there’s a qualitative difference between watching them in your living room and sitting in an audience with other people, watching a film as a common experience,” Green said.

Bryan Vizzini, a West Texas A&M University history professor and film buff, will introduce the three films and conduct a question-and-answer session at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Both men are big fans of film noir.

“I love how a lot of film noirs turn conventional storytelling on its ear,” Green said, citing “Sunset Boulevard.” “William Holden is dead and telling the whole thing in flashback.”

Vizzini said he appreciated the way a film like “In a Lonely Place” could make audiences sympathize with a suspected murderer (played by Humphrey Bogart).

And both men cited the neo-noir “Chinatown” as a classic worth watching despite — or because of — a tragic ending.

“What do we find appealing about the dark side of human nature?” Vizzini asked rhetorically, previewing his pre-film talk. “What resonates within us when we see a character on screen behaving like this?

“It’s fun to look in on that life,” he said. “I don’t want to be these people. I don’t want them to live next door to me either. But I’m entranced (by the movies). I want to go back and watch them over and over again.”